Well, you could have knocked me over with a feather when I heard that Lawrence Krauss had published a piece called “All scientists should be militant atheists“—and in The New Yorker, a venue not known for antagonism to religion. It’s amazing! Not only that, but look again at the shrill and strident title.
But Krauss is right, and I’m pleased to see that his message is also largely the message of Faith vs. Fact: that the unsubstantiated and untestable claims of religion—claims regularly imposed on nonbelievers through the law—are at direct odds with the empirically-based and testable claims of science. Not only that, but, compared to other forms of belief (much less science itself) America has institutionalized an unwarranted respect for religion. This has gotten to the point where people like Kim Davis are allowed to practice illegal discrimination as part of their job, so long as that discrimination is based on religious belief and is not too onerous for the employer.
Krauss’s essay is a Professor Ceiling Cat Required Reading™, so go have a look (it’s a short piece). I’ll give just two excepts that underscore the difference between science and religion (I’m regularly asked, in an accusatory tone, why science isn’t a form of “faith”; you can see my answer here). The bolding in the excerpts below is mine:
In science, of course, the very word “sacred” is profane. No ideas, religious or otherwise, get a free pass. The notion that some idea or concept is beyond question or attack is anathema to the entire scientific undertaking. This commitment to open questioning is deeply tied to the fact that science is an atheistic enterprise. “My practice as a scientist is atheistic,” the biologist J.B.S. Haldane wrote, in 1934. “That is to say, when I set up an experiment I assume that no god, angel, or devil is going to interfere with its course and this assumption has been justified by such success as I have achieved in my professional career.” It’s ironic, really, that so many people are fixated on the relationship between science and religion: basically, there isn’t one. In my more than thirty years as a practicing physicist, I have never heard the word “God” mentioned in a scientific meeting. Belief or nonbelief in God is irrelevant to our understanding of the workings of nature—just as it’s irrelevant to the question of whether or not citizens are obligated to follow the law.
Because science holds that no idea is sacred, it’s inevitable that it draws people away from religion. The more we learn about the workings of the universe, the more purposeless it seems. Scientists have an obligation not to lie about the natural world. Even so, to avoid offense, they sometimes misleadingly imply that today’s discoveries exist in easy harmony with preëxisting religious doctrines, or remain silent rather than pointing out contradictions between science and religious doctrine. It’s a strange inconsistency, since scientists often happily disagree with other kinds of beliefs. Astronomers have no problem ridiculing the claims of astrologists, even though a significant fraction of the public believes these claims. Doctors have no problem condemning the actions of anti-vaccine activists who endanger children. And yet, for reasons of decorum, many scientists worry that ridiculing certain religious claims alienates the public from science. When they do so, they are being condescending at best and hypocritical at worst.
The first line of the second paragraph, which I’ve emphasized in bold, is a key “admission”. Accommodationists regularly like to pretend that there’s no conflict between science and religion: that one can be a science-friendly believer or a religious scientist without any problem.. People who need their blanket of superstition, but want to be modern and progressive, will pretend that the ways that science and religion discern “truth” are perfectly harmonious. But they’re not, for, as I like to say, in religion faith is a virtue, while in science it’s a vice. The same goes for doubt: a virtue in science, a bug in religion. The result: we know infinitely more about the cosmos through science than we did five hundred years ago, but we know nothing more about the divine (a part of the cosmos) than did the ancient Greeks. Indeed, we still don’t know if there’s anything divine.
So why should scientists be militant atheists? Krauss explains it eloquently at the end of his piece (my emphasis again):
Ultimately, when we hesitate to openly question beliefs because we don’t want to risk offense, questioning itself becomes taboo. It is here that the imperative for scientists to speak out seems to me to be most urgent. As a result of speaking out on issues of science and religion, I have heard from many young people about the shame and ostracism they experience after merely questioning their family’s faith. Sometimes, they find themselves denied rights and privileges because their actions confront the faith of others. Scientists need to be prepared to demonstrate by example that questioning perceived truth, especially “sacred truth,” is an essential part of living in a free country.
I see a direct link, in short, between the ethics that guide science and those that guide civic life. Cosmology, my specialty, may appear to be far removed from Kim Davis’s refusal to grant marriage licenses to gay couples, but in fact the same values apply in both realms. Whenever scientific claims are presented as unquestionable, they undermine science. Similarly, when religious actions or claims about sanctity can be made with impunity in our society, we undermine the very basis of modern secular democracy. We owe it to ourselves and to our children not to give a free pass to governments—totalitarian, theocratic, or democratic—that endorse, encourage, enforce, or otherwise legitimize the suppression of open questioning in order to protect ideas that are considered “sacred.” Five hundred years of science have liberated humanity from the shackles of enforced ignorance. We should celebrate this openly and enthusiastically, regardless of whom it may offend.
If that is what causes someone to be called a militant atheist, then no scientist should be ashamed of the label.
It can’t be stated more clearly than that. Kudos to Krauss for not only saying—as Jeff Tayler has been doing every Sunday in Salon—that we should loudly and openly decry the claims of religion and its intrusion into democracy, but also for pointing out why science draws people away from religion. That’s an inconvenient truth that will anger the accommodationists at the National Center for Science Education and the American Association for the Advancement of Science. But tough luck for them, for science is indeed a powerful solvent for religion.
On the evening news yesterday, I watched the moment that Kim Davis was released from jail and faced her adoring public. A large crowd had gathered, waving crosses and signs of support while cheering loudly as she exited the jail. Here’s a video; the bit I saw starts 28 seconds in:
When I saw the crosses waving and the cheers erupting when Davis said, “I just want to give God the glory; His people have rallied and you are a strong people!”, I suddenly felt that I was living in an alien world: a world in which most people frenetically believe things that are palpably false, and then go nuts when those things are questioned. It’s a world in which doubt about comforting superstitions is seen as an unforgivable sin. At that moment, I realized that the title of Dawkins’s book, often criticized as “strident,” was absolutely accurate: The God Delusion.
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Well, if we’ve finally moved the Overton Window to the point that it’s okay to write in The New Yorker that religion has no place at all in science, permit me to identify where that Window needs to wind up.
And that’s with the unequivocal identification of religion with pure evil.
Kim Davis is an horrible, vicious, evil woman, and the reason she’s so mean and nasty is because she’s so very Christian.
You can’t be a good person and remain loyal to Jesus. Jesus himself made that point in more than one of the Gospels — that you can’t serve two masters. And Jesus is the master who will separate the sheep from the goats and serve them both up with a side of fava beans in an eternal barbecue.
If you’re for Jesus, you’re for torture, for not peace but the sword, for civil strife and disharmony. And if you’re not for any of those things, you’re not for Jesus.
Cheers,
b&
She is. But she is also a victim. Her brain is poisoned with the conviction that she must be this way or risk frying for eternity.
Yes. But she’s not well going to have a chance of realizing just how horrible she is if everybody keeps telling her that Jesus is the good guy and slavish devotion to him is what makes her a good person, right?
No. Jesus is the problem. She is evil, and she’s evil because she’s embracing the lie that Jesus is a love god. Love gods love marriage and young lovers in love and certainly wouldn’t even think of killing them, so the very fact that she’s standing between lovers yet again demonstrates just how seriously fucked up she and Jesus are.
b&
I’m the last person who would tell someone that Jesus was the good guy. But I have come to resist labeling a person “evil”. The ideas that are driving her are evil, yes. She has a brain infection. It is curable.
Evil is as evil does. To Godwin the thread, would you reject the notion that a Nazi footsoldier stationed at a concentration camp wasn’t evil because he was simply following orders to machinegun Jews indiscriminately?
I don’t care what beliefs motivate Kim Davis. It’s her actions that make her evil. And, compounding matters, were she to act on the rest of her beliefs, those actions would be profoundly more evil still.
b&
“would you reject the notion that a Nazi footsoldier stationed at a concentration camp wasn’t evil because he was simply following orders to machinegun Jews indiscriminately?”
Yes, when he thought that he would be shot for not following orders, I would call him maybe a coward, but not evil.
Following orders because he might be shot otherwise does make him a coward. However, when those orders include killing innocent people he has also through cowardice become evil.
Yes, exactly. Why should evil done as a result of selfish greed or laziness be labeled as evil, but evil done as a result of cowardice, which is little more than a blend of greed and laziness, not be labeled as evil? They’re all just taking the easy way out, and to Hell with those misfortunate enough to stand in their way.
b&
Moreover, Stanley Milgram’s Obedienec to Authority makes it pretty clear that according to Ben’s criteria, probably about 90% of the human race regardless of race, religion, or culture counts as “evil,” because that’s the approximate percent of the population that will go along with nazis and other primary evildoers.
Normal human beings do evil under authority figures, Ben. Often and consistently. Its the norm; not doing evil when an acknowledged authority figure tells you to do evil is the rare exception. By all means call the Hitlers, Stalins, and Jim Jones of the world evil. Their stormtroopers? I would hesitate to do that, unless you’re willing to declare the entire human race typically evil.
No; evil is as evil does.
Not would do under certain circumstances that don’t actually manifest; does.
Never mind your 90%; we know for a fact that 100% of us are susceptible to sufficient mind-altering techniques, even if that means drugs or surgery or torture or what-not.
How much more evil it is in the case of an armed soldier who could just as easily turn the weapon on the officer giving the orders! Would not the soldier just as readily die for the country (or whatever) if given some other order to charge into battle? So why not die for the greater good by defying the order?
b&
A guy in a white lab coat telling you to do something is not ‘mind altering techniques’, or drugs, or torture, or surgery. That is the point; normal people will do evil under fairly normal circumstances when told to do so by a normal authority figure. No exceptional circumstance is required. No gun to the head, or sleep deprivation, or anything like that is needed to compel people to do things they personally disagree with. A boss-figure tells you to electrically shock someone when they are crying out ‘no no please stop,’ and about 90% of people will apply the shock.
So, does that make that 90% evil?
And how many people actually do electrocute (or whatever) others for no good reason other than because somebody told them to? Not would under certain circumstances, but actually do at some point in their lifetimes?
All the hypotheticals you can dream up are meaningless if they never actually manifest themselves.
But I’ll even take it one step further.
Do you want people to do bad things just because somebody else told them to?
No?
Then why are you so eagerly reassuring them that good people do bad things when ordered to?
Wouldn’t you rather tell them the truth, that only evil people do bad things, period? Hasn’t it occurred to you that, maybe, that might make a difference in the odd cases where a weak-willed person is told by an evil person to be evil?
b&
The problem with this framing “good people”, “evil people” is that it is way over-simplistic.
People do good things and people do bad things. The same people do both kinds of things. Under some conditions people do much worse things than the would in other conditions. And the range of things one person will do can vary from the range of things some other person will do.
The challenge, IMO, is to create conditions that minimize the bad things done and maximize the good things done. Sticking an “Evil Person” tag on someone doesn’t advance the cause much.
Really?
You don’t think that telling people that the Nazi troops who gunned down people at concentration camps just because their officers told them to were evil people will do anything to minimize the chances that they’ll follow suit if they ever find themselves in a similar situation?
As I’ve repeatedly written in this thread, evil is as evil does. You do evil, you’re an evil person. You don’t want to be an evil person? Don’t do evil. It makes you uncomfortable to think you’re an evil person because you did evil things? Tough shit. You should have thought of that before doing something evil. Maybe you’ll think better of it next time, and hopefully others will learn from your evil example.
b&
That’s a very simple world view, Ben.
How much evil do you have to do to “be” evil? How often do you have to do it? How evil does the action have to be? (Some evil is certainly worse than other evil.)
GBJames has made all the points I would make.
Ben, I think you have presented a to simple case to warrant a label of evil.
Unless you are happy to label nearly everyone evil.
In the Milgram experiments, and others repeated around the world, the people were actually electrocuting people, in their minds.
I don’t see how you could differentiate two people, one who followed exactly the same orders but one person behind the door was electrocuted and behind the other door only acted.
At no stage would those two people know the real outcome, so how could one be evil and the other not.
Unless your application of evil has no intentional component.
Also, in a war soldiers a conditioned to follow orders, are conditioned to regard others as worthless, and, if they didn’t do it they and their family would suffer the prisoners would be killed anyway, and so on.
What about bomber pilots and crews who knew that they would kill civilians, what about collateral damage in general.
Context matters.
Michael, again, my point is not whether somebody would do something in some hypothetical that never actually actualizes; but, rather, whether or not somebody actually does something. And, in the real, non-hypothetical world, within rounding, 0% of the population has intentionally electrocuted anybody, on orders or otherwise — and, with similar rounding, 100% of those who have are so ashamed of their actions that their identities are a closely guarded state secret.
Yes; that’s horrifically evil. And if we would just simply fucking stop making heroes of the monsters who rain death upon others, if we would stop declaring them to be the pinnacle of humanity and instead properly identify them as the nadir, maybe — just possibly perhaps — we’d finally have that war that nobody would show up to.
Your parents should have taught you this — two wrongs don’t make a right. And maybe there really are times when fighting is the lesser of two evils — but it’s still evil.
And, of course, in reality…every single fucking American war of my lifetime and for a generation before has been evil. In every war starting with Korea, we’ve been the baddies. We’ve been the invaders who’ve tried to beat the foreigners into bloody submissions, who’ve mercilessly killed those who posed no threat to us even in principle. Sure, we’ve hated the vile scum corrupting the innocent peasants in Vietnam or Iraq or Afghanistan or wherever…but so fucking what? Hitler and the Nazis hated the vile scum corrupting the innocent Polish peasants, and do we consider that valid reason for his invasion?
I mean, really. Is it too much to ask that we acknowledge just how evil it is to napalm a little girl, even if the guy who did it to her felt bad about it, even if the guy who did it to her spoke our language and not hers?
Nobody thinks of themselves as evil, not even — especially not even — when doing the most horrifically evil things imaginable. And it’s about goddamned time we stopped playing to this nonsense that all that matters is the fantasy reasons somebody does something, and not the real things they actually do.
Evil is as evil does.
b&
Is this some kind of mantra?
There’s another thread somewhere in which a fellow named Ben is arguing about the impossibility of finding the demarcation between blue and green. I think I’ll go over there and just tell him that “green is as green does” and see what his response is.
If it’s a clear definition of, “evil,” you’re looking for, that’s straightforward: doing unto others as they do not wish to be done unto.
And, yes, that can come in degrees, and there will also be cases where it’s the only way to prevent the others from doing some doing unto.
But we’re talking about war and Nazis and torture and murder. We’re waaaaaay past any subtle questions of whether 490 nm is more blue-green or green-blue; this is UV vs IR land.
And, honestly, I’m more than a bit surprised to be getting so much pushback from my identification of Nazis and cluster bombs and napalming girls as being evil. If those things aren’t evil, then what is!?
b&
You’re not getting pushback for calling Nazis evil. You’re getting pushback for rigidity and speaking in simpleminded terms.
By the definition you just provided all humans are all evil. We have all done something to someone that we would not want done to us.
You’re getting pushback from me because you insist on saying “Kim Davis is evil” without also acknowledging that she is also a victim. The “evil” she has done is embrace Jesus, per your comment upstream. That’s a far cry from your subsequent Nazi fellow.
Actions are evil. It adds little to say a person is evil, telling us only that they did something really bad, something we already knew knowing about some behavior.
But calling someone “evil” also suggests a character flaw that is probably inherent in the person, something that other people (like you, for instance) don’t have. (I assume you would not describe yourself as “evil”.) The label changes a conversation from one about an act to one about inherent personal characteristics.
Say someone does an evil act. A really evil act. Maybe they eat a baby, as we atheists are known to do. You’d probably say that person is evil. The next day they don’t repeat the menu, limiting themselves to rice and beans. Are they still evil? If they never do another bad thing in their life, are they still evil on the day they die?
It is a word that has more value in religious context than in secular conversation.
Yes. Exactly. (Some more than others, of course.)
And your refusal to face that fact simply because you’re afraid of the consequences does absolutely nothing to lessen the evil in the world, and a great deal to foster an environment in which it may continue to dwell.
Also, a correction…the classic Christian formulation of the Golden Rule, as you phrased it in your quote above, is insufficient in a very significant way. Torquemada was doing unto others as he would wish done unto himself; as he put it, better a few weeks or months of terrestrial torture than an eternity of damnation. In his mind, he was acting little differently from a surgeon who reduced a fracture.
That’s why it’s essential that we refrain from doing unto others what they themselves do not wish to have done unto them. Informed consent, “no means no,” the right of personal autonomy — those concepts.
On a final note…I again find it bizarre that an atheist should be insisting that real-live humans are somehow as inherently pure as the religious insist their gods are, or that we should otherwise pretend that everybody is so pure. Do you really think that, or are you just putting forth a “little person” argument, not wishing to upset people at the thought that they’re not actually the saints they think themselves to be?
Cheers,
b&
I am still not sure you are clear here Ben.
You haven’t explained the intentional component.
Evil as evil does? Without an intentional component that would make any one who accidently hurt someone evil.
The people in the Milgram experiments could hear there victims screaming and still kept on. They did do it. And many were scarred by it.
I agree about the evils of the wars I mentioned and we are not the only guilty ones. I still have long hair, partly as my ongoing protest at Vietnam. I don’t get why your questioning it.
If we are all evil, that may be true but that devalues the notion of evil.
Of course it’s not binary and set in stone. If realizing that you really shouldn’t have knocked down that little old lady when you ran past her at the park when you were six makes you think that you’re an evil monster so you decide to drive down sidewalks to kill pedestrians…well, you might have had a marginally evil past before, but now you’ve just gone and made yourself unimaginably worse.
My objection is to the fear, repeatedly expressed in this thread, of saying that the Nazis who gunned down Jews in concentration camps or the Americans who napalmed Vietnamese villages…of saying that that’s not evil…doesn’t that devalue the term far more than saying that people who do evil things are evil?
b&
The problem with Davis is that she is an adult convert. Her well documented history shows her current opinions are new, and her ability to be repeatedly elected to her job shows she’s not stupid. She chose a religion that practises bigotry.
She could have gone for a denomination that’s all about love, acceptance, inclusion etc, but she went for one that led her to current events.
I don’t know whether “evil” is the right word, but it sure as heck isn’t “good.”
Her behavior certainly can’t be called “good”.
I think we’ll end up in a snarled up discussion of free will if we continue far down this road. But I don’t know much about her pre-conversion life or what sort of circumstances surrounded her “rebirth”. I would be surprised if she hadn’t already been some kind of fundamentalist Christian and if her former god-clubs were much divergent from her current one.
Married husband #1
Had twins to future husband #3
Divorced husband #1 1994
Married husband #2
Husband #2 adopts her kids
Divorced husband #2 2006
Married husband #3
Divorced Husband #3 2008
Husband #2 becomes husband #4
Joined Apostolic Church 2011
“Following the death of my godly mother-in-law over four years ago, I went to church to fulfill her dying wish,” she said in a statement.
“There I heard a message of grace and forgiveness and surrendered my life to Jesus Christ.”
Say’s she’s “changed 180 degrees” since conversion.
“Say’s she’s “changed 180 degrees” since conversion.”
She is obviously innumerate since the change has been 360 degrees.
LOL. Good point! 🙂
Huh? At 360° you’re precisely where you started from…
As Diane says, 360 is keeping on going on the same track.
None of that history suggests to me that she wasn’t a god-fearing Christian all along and just changed clubs a few years back.
That’s my point. She changed clubs four years ago, and the club she chose was one that’s (imo of course) bigoted. She could have chosen another one that wasn’t.
She’s a bigot; religion is just her excuse.
My beet is that the club(s)she left are equally bigotted.
Is there a joke I didn’t get?
Ben, don’t be so wishy-washy on this subject 🙂
I am 100% in agreement with you on Kim Davis.
Forgot to add, but Mike Huckabee is a whole other order of magnitude of evil compared to her.
But even Huckabee is tame compared to Rafael Cruz.
IMO a chief difficulty with the Gospel Jesus is that he starts off wanting a Utopian ideal but one of his prescriptions for it is !*emotional repression*!. This inevitably results in eventual eruptions of emotional rage. He becomes a figure whom as Jung said of God “can be loved but must be feared”. He is too much like the lead character in the stage play The Ruling Class played by Peter O’Toole in the film.
The lead in that play has come to believe he is Jesus. He acts very lovey-dovey in a cloying and artificially ingratiating way. He is violently non-violent, with no healthy way to let off steam, no good way to experience what Aristotle called “catharsis”. After being pulled out of his belief by electro-shock therapy, he has a relapse, now believing himself to be a combination of Richard III, Jack the Ripper, and the Old Testament Yahweh at his worst.
A comparable character in modern life is the singer John Denver who cultivated an image as a sweet country boy, but who in reality had an extraordinarily violent and vicious temper. (One might be tempted to compare him to John Lennon, but Lennon in no way concealed his temper from the general public. He owned up to it, never pretending to be an ideal embodiment of his peace ethic.)
There are many many good progressives who admire Jesus including Gandhi. One of the most eloquent expressions of such is the book by Milan Machovec entitled in German “Jesus for Atheists?” (sadly retitled in English “A Marxist Looks at Jesus” although Marxism has nothing at all to do with the book.)
But while one may commend Jesus for saying “Blessed are the peacemakers”, one has to question the wisdom of “If your eye causes you to sin, pluck it out” (both from the Sermon on the Mount- on this latter Nietzsche snarkily noted “It is not exactly the eye that is meant”). The fly in the ointment is the horribly unsound devotional program for self-control. Liberals focus on Jesus better ethical teachings (Good Samaritan, etc.), but not ONLY ignore his apocalyptic outbursts, but also the bad human psychology.
Contrast the thinking of William Shakespeare whose sonnets express very noble ideals, but whose plays are so often about acknowledging and facing negative emotions. Ultimately, one matures more watching Shakespeare in the Park than listening to the Sermon on the Mount. (The San Francisco Bay Area as of this summer has five independent free outdoor Shakespeare in the Park productions.)
Many excellent points!
My one quibble is that, as it turns out, even the often-quoted lovey-dovey one-liners…well, I can’t think of a single one that stands up in context. Sure, they’ve been re-worked to death and cast into an Enlightenment worldview…but the originals? Not so nice after all.
Much of the “peace” Jesus preaches, for example, is the peace of a slave humbly submitting to any abuse the master wishes to dish out, for the slave will soon have a gentler master after death.
b&
I have wondered about the plucking out the eye thing.
I Nietzsche meant something like the minds eye or the intention or motivation that may be reasonable. But, one can’t ‘pluck’ those things, out so I think Nietzsche may be wrong and it’s eyeballs out all the way.
Unless I missed something.
I always find it amusing that Christians feel they need to “stand up for Jesus”. Why does Jesus need standing up for? Isn’t he tough enough? Why don’t Christians ask Jesus to stand up for them?
Maybe Jesus didn’t hear the great news Bob Dole had about a little blue pill?
…sorry…couldn’t resist….
b&
I am liking Lawrence Krauss more and more every time I hear something new from him.
Do you suppose it may be because a good portion of his formative years were spent in Toronto and Ottawa?
I don’t have the necessary referents to opine on that. Generally I’d say that his background obviously has something to do with the person he is today.
Excellent article. Krauss is apparently adopting a new strategy with regard to the label “militant.” Instead of repeating the popular atheist talking points re the distinction between debating an issue and resorting to actual violence, he’s “taking on” the word with pride. In your face. It reminds me of gay activists defiantly self-designating themselves as “queer,” “fag,” or, for that matter, “gay.”
I’m agnostic about whether “militant atheist” is a good idea.
The article itself is a breath of fresh air. If it only incites the accomodationists to double their efforts, we should I think try to keep in mind that as annoying as accomodationism is, it’s still on a more atheist-friendly part of the spectrum than where mainstream religion currently is. We’re rude instead of demonic. Overton window again.
IMO Krauss is militant in the sense of “vigorously active and aggressive” (definition 1 at dictionary.com) but not in the sense of “belligerent, combative” (1st two synonyms given) which is just about right.
I agree. My concern is that this distinction is too “subtle” for critics intent on making a point at all costs and therefore eager to grab on to anything which makes it easier to do so.
I don’t think we’ve got a lot of choice. Every other minority group has faced the same dilemma…and, in the end, you wind up stuck with something you’d never have picked for yourself but that you wind up embracing nonetheless.
b&
True, but that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t pick and choose among the labels.
There was a bit of a movement not long ago to drop the term “atheist” because it was considered too divisive and hostile-sounding, and go instead with something less threatening and more obscure, like “humanist” or “rationalist.” Other atheists argued that the religious history of demeaning nonbelief pointed towards a creeping demonization of whatever term we used. “Atheist” was clear and simple — not a perjorative. Own it. Or, at least, don’t reject it for that reason.
But “militant” doesn’t seem to me to have that same sort of obvious connection. In fact, the average person typically couples it with the idea of extremism, if not violence. A feminist vs. a militant feminist, for example.
So I get your point, but I’m still not sure it will be that easy to slip “outspoken and vigorously active” into the “way too aggressive and mean” slot. The problem isn’t the way our usual enemies will spin it; the problem is that the neutral tend to see it circling around that way anyway.
The point I’m trying to make is that sometimes you simply can’t pick and choose among the labels. And, when that happens, you’re often better off embracing the derogatory term. “Damned right I’m ______!”
The point of the slur is to shut down debate before it even begins. But if you can flip it around, as Lawrence does brilliantly in this New Yorker piece, you have an opportunity to completely own the debate.
Again, even if the term in question would have been stricken from the bottom of the first round had you been in charge.
b&
Absolutely. I say we take it and run with it, always with the implied wink-in-the-voice referencing the “militant religionists fly planes into buildings; militant atheists write books” trope.
Or, as I put it some time back:
https://whyevolutionistrue.wordpress.com/2014/07/13/a-militant-atheist/
b&
Heh — I just thought of the perfect example: “New Atheism.”
Surely you mean “Gnu Atheism?”
Evolution at work … 😉
I prefer the term, “Wildebeest Atheism.”
b&
“I’m agnostic about whether “militant atheist” is a good idea”
I think it would be a very very stupid idea.
I want to be labeled “reasonable” but not “militant”.
Maybe the big advantage of Krauss endorsing “militant” atheism is that it allows us to say that we read the piece and didn’t agree with everything Krauss said — and then go on to agree with everything he says except some tangential stupid semantic issue.
That way we sound like we’re compromising. We’re in the middle. So it’s all right then to agree with us.
(Tactics …. heheheh.)
(The sad thing is they often seem to work.)
Agree.
Compromising is good politics, but I’m not advocating everyone should become a politician. But trying to avoid wrong and negative labels seems to me a good strategy.
Well, there’s the rub – who is doing the labeling? The problem is that society at large is religious, and for them to consider an atheist reasonable, well, we tend to need to do at least one of two things: 1) be very, very quiet about our atheism, or 2) talk about how much we regret being atheists, how much we’d prefer to believe if only we could. Essentially, to be labeled reasonable by a religious society, an atheist must be an accomodationist and must treat religion (or at least faith-based belief) like a good thing – anything else, and you’re militant.
Me? I don’t particularly care if the unreasonable don’t consider me reasonable. It just means that we’re even.
I think you neglect the desired alternative.
3) Get enough of us to come out of the closet so that non-belief is normalized and everyone, even theists, recognize the silliness of using “militant” the way it has been used.
As a scientists, do I feel there should be strong advocates for the climate or vaccinations or evolution and education and, of course, against religion, in general. Yes. Should they be militant? Absolutely. Do I want to be one of them? Not really.
This reminds me of: “Problems about the atomic bomb and the future are much more complicated and I cannot make any short statement to summarize my beliefs here.” R.P. Feynman *
Feynman, I predict, would not have liked Tw**ter. But Feynman (I cannot find the source) said that there are people who do and should care about morality and belief systems but he happened not to be one who promoted himself that way.
Nevertheless, we need more Krausses. It would be nice if I was one, but my personality is not consistent with militancy.
* – http://blog.nuclearsecrecy.com/2014/06/06/feynman-and-the-bomb/
I suspect that, from an accomodationist’s point of view, anyone who thinks we “need more Krausses” is militant, regardless of whether they themselves are going out there as activists, or not.
Accomodationism is more of a mindset than a behavior: when all is said and done, it boils down to the idea that atheists need to shut up and stop arguing against faith per se.
Uh, Kevin. I’ve been reading your comments here for years and I have to be honest. You are a shrill, militant atheist! 🙂
You are probably correct. But mostly only on WEIT. And I am hoping the conviction extends itself elsewhere. Krauss certainly inspires, much like Hitchens did.
Just a side note: Few people have inspired me to think and do science more than Hitchens. Isn’t that interesting. He was a great motivational speaker for thinking, period.
A jubilant crowd. A presidential candidate holding her hand. Even “Eye of the Tiger” is playing. I wonder if we’ll see the same spectacle with clerks refusing marriage licenses to interracial couples.
She’ll probably write a book soon. “God vs Gay Demons: the epic battle of a Kentucky county clerk” or some ridiculous title like that.
It is disgusting, isn’t it? It always boggles my mind that the people involved in things like this, Kim Davis, the Huckster, the celebrants, do not perceive how inhumane their behavior reveals them to be. It is like burying kittens neck deep and running them over with a lawn mower, and then praising the deed and having a celebration. Pretending to be oh so civilized about behavior that is blatantly uncivilized.
I’d like to see a clerk refusing to issue a marriage license to Kim Davis for her fifth marriage because it doesn’t jibe with christian beliefs.
Perfect!
Yes indeed, I’d pay money to see that video clip.
Survivor has now come out and objected to her using the song.
That is awesome. My “faith” (fyi, those are scare quotes) in humanity is at least partially restored.
Is there a sufficient royalty she could offer to pay them that they wouldn’t so object? Or do they say that it is the principle of the thing?
Is there any national political candidate who declines to indulge in this musical conceit when making his way to the stage? Are there at least a few CEO’s who indulge in this? Do they do this at the Nobel ceremony?
It’s always disturbing to me observing a crowd ever so jubilant at being absolutely wrong, and in this case, relishing in their bigotry. It’s disgusting, plain and simple.
Religious believers expect people to be willing to accommodate their views and I’ve often thought that Richard Dawkins attracts so much criticism because he is uncompromising. Which on reflection, I support.
Great work from Krauss. Interesting connection between science and civil society: “Belief or nonbelief in God is irrelevant to our understanding of the workings of nature—just as it’s irrelevant to the question of whether or not citizens are obligated to follow the law.” But does the law itself need to be treated as a kind of “sacred” entity for this to work?
I don’t think so, since the question “why should we have this law?” or even “why do we need laws at all?” can be asked and answered in various ways in a philosophical forum. By definition, anything which can be doubted, debated, and perhaps changed isn’t “sacred.”
The law is the antithesis of sacred. We pick amongst ourselves allegedly the best and brightest to have as their full-time jobs the constant modification of the law — and in many different ways. The law is fluid, ever-changing; only the sacred has the timelessness of death.
b&
“The law is fluid, ever-changing…”
And unfortunately, often for the worse. (“Religious Freedom Restoration” laws; Concealed Carry; Stand Your Ground…)
It’s a two-steps-forward-one-back thing. We’re going through a low period now, especially with all the police state “anti-terror” laws…but we’re still much better off today than we were a century ago.
b&
I also appreciate and relate strongly to PCC’s comment about the feeling of “living in an alien world.” It is readily apparent that human beings are strongly compelled by their brains to believe in things that aren’t true–it’s a key feature of our species. Modern science is truly revolutionary insofar as it helps us avoid falling prey to those false beliefs. It’s strange and sometimes hard to be in the minority group that recognizes how science renders religion (and countless other false beliefs) completely and utterly useless.
A hundred years ago, science hadn’t yet proven that germs caused most diseases.
Today, we still can’t say exactly how a “belief” manifests itself in our brains (though we’re confident it does).
I think that’s good reason to feel it’s likely that in another hundred years, science will have found a cure for religion and other pathological delusions.
“I also appreciate and relate strongly to PCC’s comment about the feeling of “living in an alien world.””
Oh, me too. I remember being at a Catholic memorial service, surrounded by over a hundred people chanting the Hail Mary twenty times or so and feeling like I was trapped in some old-time Nat-Geo TV documentary of African tribes-people beating drums and chanting around fires….
We need to declare a jihad.
This is dangerously wrong.
Krauss means “militant” in the sense of being active and vocal not violent and oppressive. Militants who use the word “jihad” are the latter. We scientists should NOT align ourselves with them.
It was tongue-in-cheek, my boy.
*phew*. Thanks, Scott. It can be hard to tell on the intertubes.
Still for me even the term “militant” makes me edgy precisely because the meanings can be conflated.
Ironically, what we need now are more laws protecting citizens from religion, not more laws protecting religion.
Watch out for the First Amendment Defense Act trying to make its way through Congress.
https://www.aclu.org/blog/washington-markup/disingenuous-first-amendment-defense-act-indiana-steroids
Many Kim Davis “memes” around. One I liked was a Tweet that turned the religious freedom argument against itself:
“No one’s being jailed for practicing her religion. Someone’s being jailed for using the government to force others to practice her religion.”
Interestingly enough, I saw this concise sentiment was (presumably) posted by a progressive Christian, Rachel Held Evans. Very well stated though.
“but we know nothing more about the divine than did the ancient Greeks”
Au contraire, we now know that annulments should be easier to get.
$$$
The conversion of Mike Huckabee to Al Sharpton is complete.
Indeed!
Krauss is an excellent expositor. What a clear and concise statement of the case.
“I suddenly felt that I was living in an alien world”
This statement fits my feeling from the time I was 12 years old.
I think it is fair to say that approximately half of the population of the US of A is mentally handicapped (crazy), schizophrenic, disconnected from reality.
About the same proportion is valid for Congress, probably reflecting the proportion of insanity across the population: half of the American politicians (Republicans) are surreally insane.
I side entirely with Lawrence Krauss. The only hope is strident militancy against root causes of this sad state of affairs: organized religion and non-private faith.
I disagree. Congress almost certainly has a higher incidence of crazy than the general public. My hypothesis is that the system preferentially selects for crazy.
I must concede that perhaps a significant percentage of the crazies in government do not really believe their crazy shit and merely act as they do and say what they do for personal gain. But, 1) that is worse in pretty much any way one cares to parse it, and 2) it looks the same as just being sincerely crazy from where I am sitting.
To the extent that politics tends to favor narcissists and sociopaths, it does out-perform the general public in degree of mental dysfunction.
It’s a brilliant article, to be sure. But what he says about “God” in the context of science is the same with police work, you’ll notice. When a body is found with 3 bullet holes to the head, the detectives never speculate, “Well, I suppose God just wanted to take him to heaven, and of course God can make it look any way God wants it to look, and we can’t possibly understand the mind of God.” Likewise, when a child disappears, no one assumes that child was “raptured” or otherwise taken bodily to “heaven”. Everyone expects materialist explanations for phenomena in the real world, when it comes down to it. People of faith simply want excuses to impose their belief and rules on the rest of us without our consent.
Yes. Even extremely committed theists often dispense with religion in very many contexts. There are a lot of theists who live 99% of their lives as atheists. Unfortunately, they always seem to have a 1% moment when they walk into a voting booth.
Similar to how someone on their way to commit suicide will look before crossing the street.
Lots of chatter about Krauss’s article. Here is one take. I particularly enjoyed the paragraphs which follow the excerpts.
M. Greg Matwichuk Calgary, Alberta, Canada
>
“…when religious actions or claims about sanctity can be made with impunity in our society, we undermine the very basis of modern secular democracy”
Unfortunately a sizeable minority, perhaps even a majority, don’t want a modern secular democracy. They prefer what we have now – a somewhat theocratic oligarchy. What they wish is that that becomes more theocratic and more oligarchic. The american revolution and its early results are failed experiments. What is worse is that it has set the lead for other western countries to become less democratic and for some, like my native Canada, to become more theocratic too.
I tell you what, in college Chemistry, if you turned in a lab report stating “My experiment failed because demons interfered”, the most charitable response you’d get is an order to redo it.
Reminds me of my Chem II teacher in high school. Looking back I think his class was more difficult than the college chemistry courses I took. In his labs there were two possible outcomes. You either got it right, or you didn’t. Either 100% or a bright red 8-1/2″ x 11″ 0, as he called it. He positively gloated each time he handed out one of those. He would show it to the whole class, all six of us.
One of those in a semester would trash your grade which was based on 3 or 4 exams and 3 or 4 labs. One poor classmate had an anxiety attack right there in class on receiving one of his full page size 0s.
Luckily I managed to avoid them. I was sure I was toast on one lab though. We each received vials of clear fluid and we had to determine what they contained using various processes. Mine contained distilled water.
His saving grace was that he used to bounce sparks from a Van de Graaff generator off his bald head while lecturing the class.
“His saving grace was that he used to bounce sparks from a Van de Graaff generator off his bald head while lecturing the class.”
What a perfect intro to my response to the experiment thread. Girl Genius, a steam punk comic, had a “in our world of mad geniuses, we routinely create monsters, (steam driven) ‘clanks’ and death rays” take that made me spout my coffee:
[Professor] “I warn you, no one here will fall for the old “my homework ate my dog” excuse.”
[ http://www.girlgeniusonline.com/comic.php?date=20150828#.VfFKuxHtmko ; last panel]
Religious folks, particularly of the evangelical and arch Catholic kinds, are frightened to their very core. They see that the essence of their delusional beliefs is being challenged everywhere. Their only recourse is strike back, egged on by demagogues such as Mike Huckabee and Ted Cruz. As more and more people are coming out as atheists or at least non-religious, right-wing religion is playing a major, if not predominant role, in the Republican party. If a Republican wins the White House in 2016, the danger of theocratic government will become real. This is why people who say there is no difference between the parties are fools. The differences are real, particularly in their attitudes toward the relationship between government and religion.
Agreed, Historian.
If a Republican wins the White House in 2016
That thought chills me to the core, especially with this current bunch of whack-jobs.
Monday (Labor Day) was the last day of the Minnesota State Fair and my wife and I spent some time there (our third visit this year) doing the usual “pig out” behavior while surrounded by a couple hundred thousand fellows of the herd. For some irrational reason we look forward to this rite every year, eagerly wanting to try as many of the new concoctions on a stick as we can. I also find the hoard of fellow humans strangely fascinating. It’s fairly diverse for Minnesota and its mostly a rare example of all the diversity somehow getting along. There are all the usual partisan displays at various booths and on various t-shirts and paraphernalia. But most people just ignore that, more intent on getting grease stains on those t-shirts than promoting the message.
But what prompted writing this was Jerry’s comment about feeling like he was living in an alien world. I had a sense of that on Monday at the Fair. It was hot and unusually crowded, so we wandered into the “Colosseum”, the huge arena where the livestock judging and horse shows take place. It’s cool in there and you can sit down for spell. They were in the process of setting up for “The Bulls only Rodeo”. Since it was free and we were curious we hung around. I knew that like all events of this ilk we would have to suffer through the usual anthem singing and invocations. What I wasn’t prepared for was the skillful way this was presented by the MC. I think the guy must be a preacher in a different life. The anthem and the prayers and the obligatory salute to the military were skillfully woven into a smarmy, militaristic, theistic and patriotic cloth accompanied by organ music lots of American flags including one paraded around by a mounted cowgirl princess. These were not separate little rituals. It was all one thing blended into a frightening mythology. Talk about stumbling into an alien world. Somehow I knew this stuff went on, but I was unprepared for how skillfully it is being done. It’s time to be afraid of how easily we might slide into a theocracy.
Wow, that is eye-opening! My family are not fair-goers, it’s just not our thing in the summer, plus it’s tough to enjoy as vegetarians. We’ve lived in Minnesota and Iowa where the fairs are a big deal. In the back of my mind I always guessed that some parts of it were like what you described. I’m both amazed, yet not really amazed at all, to hear from you that it’s true. What is this America that you have witnessed?
Levi: Yes, the fairgoing experience isn’t for everyone and your life is probably healthier for having avoided it for the most part. It’s “in my blood” since some of my earliest memories are of my parents and grandparents taking me to the Fair every year. We would would be in line when the gates opened and would stay all day until closing time. Somehow the year just isn’t complete without at least one visit (which is impossible, since you can’t eat everything in one visit). I’m hoping that the small slice of Americana I witnessed in the Colosseum on Monday is truely a small slice. But it did wake me up to the need for vigilance and visibility.
well i guess the only thing “sacred” in science is evidence.
And that’s not even sacred, because you can also question the validity of the evidence.
most definitely.
i guess what i meant was the idea of valuing evidence.
I understand the sentiment: I have no idea how any scientist can count themselves as one of the faithful; it’s a testament to the power of cognitive dissonance. However, the title to Dr. Krauss’ piece, as is, expresses a pipe dream. I thought a better title might be “All Atheist Scientists Should be Militant”.
I don’t think you can be a “religious scientist” they are antithetical. One might claim to be a “scientist of faith” but it really is an oxymoron. Choose.
Kenneth Miller, a biologist at Brown University who co-wrote a major biology textbook for high school and college, testified as the plaintiff’s lead expert in the Kitzmiller v. Dover trial, and is a crackerjack debater of creationists, is, apparently, a practicing Catholic. Also, one of my dissertation committee members was/is an excellent scientist, and one of the smartest people I know, is religious. I know plenty of religious scientists here in good ol’ Kentucky.
It is telling, though, that Miller and similar scientists all leave their gods at the lab door. Not once, to the best of my knowledge, has Miller ever proposed in any textbook or peer-reviewed publication that a divine explanation is reasonable to consider for some biological fact.
…outside the lab, outside the classroom, sure. But not inside — and that distinction is most revealing in all sorts of interesting ways.
Cheers,
b&
Of course not and, while I get petesmif’s point, I see it as more semantic. Regardless of how much Krauss wants all scientists to be militant atheists it just ain’t happening. Now, all atheist scientists are not militant but perhaps they should be and it is a more realistic goal! Hence, my suggestion for the title change.
Regarding this strange christian lady, earlier today I THINK I saw and heard a male Fox News employee make critical comments about her stance on religious grounds. Since this was Fox and such a heresy is impossible can somebody please check that this was not a delusion caused by over excitement.
And now the opposite . . . and in Nature . . .
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v525/n7568/full/525184a.html?WT.mc_id=TWT_NatureNews
It is a bizarre review of Dawkins’ new book. I actually agree with some of the scientific criticism, but, still, absurd.
Gack!
He lost me at “transgressive sexiness.”
You GO, New Yorker!!!
“We should celebrate this openly and enthusiastically, regardless of whom it may offend.”
“If that is what causes someone to be called a militant atheist, then no scientist should be ashamed of the label”
Lawrence Krauss is not a militant atheist but seems he is happy if he is labeled as such if it gets the job done.
I would suggest and this is my interpretation of Krauss’s position, his tolerance level for the drivel that is espoused by faith worshippers would be at the short end.
What his field of science and science in general has discovered on our behalf has killing off faith in those wanting to engage with it, faith just can’t sustain the lie when confronted with the ever growing counter evidence.
And this, “A purposeless universe” is a good starting point for being a militant atheist, no shot over the bow, that one.
Militancy, so be it and you don’t have to try very hard.
sub
Krauss, militant scientist (re philosophy) and now militant atheist (re theology). I like it!
Maybe it is me, but I think that is still too shielding religion from its due criticism.
If any other idea had went through the same amount of detailed scrutiny – for thousands of years [!] – it would be deemed as adjudicated (though still tentative) fact:
There is nothing there. There is no ‘divine’. This is an ex-parrot!
It’s me, too. 😉
This article just came across my Facebook feed, yet another nail in the coffin for accomdationism, and though I’m sure they’ll hand-wave it away, this seems to present a problem even for Sophisticated Theologians. From the story:
Not only does this present a problem for the Adam and Eve story that humans learned of death when Adam and Eve sinned against God, it presents a major problem in the story that humans are the only species endowed with a soul which allows us to be aware of our own demise.
Ya… There’s more here in the NY Times.
I understand it will be on PBS’s Nova next week.
The waving crosses reminded me of Billy Holiday singing ‘Strange Fruit.’ At a young age one of the major reasons that I came to reject religion is how mobs of people can justify even the most horrible actions by claiming that their all loving god commanded them to do it.
You should read this unhinged response to Krauss over at National Review.
I’ll just include one howler from it:
I guess in Catholic tradition you were “allowed to question” anything you like so long as you were also willing to be burnt at the stake. So, sure… open inquiry has always been part of the Catholic tradition… history books are filled with their stories.
It is astounding the depth of lying that people will stoop to in the name of religion.
Wow…really? The Catholic Church would have no problem with the assertion that the Trinity isn’t real or that it’s okay to abuse one of the crackers? Not sure what world that commenter lives in, but it’s not this one…